Poge 6
THE CHINA MAIL, MONDAY, JUNE 26, 1961.
Woll, now that wo've got a famous advertiser offering prizos to individual players for brighter Tost cricket
TEENAGE
SMOS
***London Express Service.
DARTMOOR
MOTHERS It doesn't take much to touch off
Schooltime isn't the time to tackle the problem By JOYCE BOWMAN
THEY'RE at it again-the well-meaning ones
who get hold of the wrong end of the stick, and the equally well-meaning ones who think it indelicate to pick up a stick at all.
The subject; sex and babløe. Guarante เบ altimet inearing do-gooders from
and near.
well- far
in Hir
girls Noticing that more than ever are marrying and
while having babies teens, Ilford Maternity Hospital and local schools are ราชปร
nothercraft lessons for 15-year
old girls.
At the hospital the girls are shown how pregnancy tesls are made; they watch women prac- for sing relaxation exercises easy birth, and then they down on mattresses and practise The easy-birth exercises #hern- selves.
When news
of this
reached the Right Rev. Bernard Wall,
a riot in a seething world of steel
and slate
OUTSIDE the mailbag
shop the prison officer said: "They may shout a bit. This is a bad
day. They'll be touchy
about visitors." He seem- ed edgy.
He unlocked the door with a 6in key and we went Into the painful their Ar baby
may Nissen hat in Pentonville Prison have been, women want second where 157 men sat alt squeezed babies, and third babies.
up in official accommodation for Mr Alan Ingleby, education 100. stitching eight regulation secretary of the Marriage Guid-stitches to the inch. ance Council, go: pretty awar the mark (for a man when he said of the lessons: "Girls this age should be told how to have proper boy-girl relation ships, not how to have a baby,"
TOO LATE
of
With this in mind, teachers officials in Oxford and health have arranged to give talks on sex in every primay, secondary, and gaminar school in the area, Such talks are needed; there is a rising trend toward schoolgirl The Roman Catholle Bishop of motherhood, and Oxford's e- Brentwood, he grasped
thegitimary rate is above the na- wrong end of the stick firmly in
tional average. both
declared; hunds and
J'm waiting. however, for "Why
must glels of sich a
well-meaning Oxford tender
age be told 50 much eltizon to protest at these les- about such a delicate matter?"
sons, Some one is bound to.
I've only
objection: One they're too late and in the wrong place.
DELICATE?
Bless you, bishop, your heart's
in the right place but how wrong you are.
Bleth isn't a delicate mater- at least, none of the three in which I
senior partner
wes
aren't
was. But girls of 15 delicate either. Women aren't, at any
age: that's junt musculine delusion,
1
The real renson I'm against these stretch-and-grunt exer- clses for girls of 15 is that it's a waste of their time just then.
Because girls of 15 aren't really interested in babies — though they may be curious, The time for tessong about birth is when A woman IS pregnant.
What's
Pregnancy inats an awful long time, and you're grateful for any distraction.
more, it
Jx A time when women are anxious to learn about eaty birth--though how many benent by it I wouldn't Üke to say; the experts are still divided about its value.
DEFENCE
In defence of the scheme, the hospital matron ከነኪ፡ said: "The more girls realise that cluldbirth is a perfectly natural function the belter."
Quite right. But what snakes you think, matron, that these ittle trips to the hospital will do that.
In fech the other real objection to the idea in that it matter tables subject for special leasona and hospitala. And they're not. It makes the idea of birth more important than the idea of having a baby, the mean mora important than the end.
And it's bobles, of course, that matter. That is why, however uncomfortable
downright
QC
Some
The time to teach the facts of life is when the questions first
come up.
London Express Service),
Lou
They did shot! a bit, but It wasn't
bad. The Arst watching silence was the worst Then they jeered and part. laughed and were suitably rude, but without venom.
HATE
It had been worse in the inat shop They jeered there too, but the laughter was different. It had hate in it.
BY
ANTHONY
Pentonville
HOPE
Is one of the
oldest, worst prisons in Western Europe. Worse, far worse, than
Dorinter.
Dertinoor has the notorious лome, and deserves it.
TRUE
But it is the overcrowded prisons like Pentonville which give the true prison picture.
Dartmoor has
only 500 prisoners; Pentonville more than 1.300-500 more than it was bulit for 113 years ago.
Pentonville's 97 prison officers were jumpy all right. You could trel ft, see it. They didn't smile. Even those I talked to outside the prison seemed alill on edge.
The officer said: "In other prisons you can get along with The men. But here if I put my cap down I'd find it all screwed up. The men aren't friendly."
He stopped talking as a dozen men, in bing battle-dress jackets and blue pocketless trousers, came along struggling, going somewhere, indifferently.
He went out "In 20 years in prisons I've never felt i needed to carry my stick (trimchean) Here I wan! it."
Silvester's latest
success
I MEAN THE GONG
HE GETS FOR DANCING
By SHIRLEY LOWE
WHEN the Vicar of
WE
Wembley took his
son Victor to the Bi- shop's Ball at Fulham Palace, the 11-year-old boy enjoyed the ice- cream hut thought the dancing was soppy.
That litle boy grew up and danced his way lo a fortune and, In the last Honours Llot, the Or ser of the British Empire for "services to ballroom dancity."
Hiding hist splendid physi que behind a big desk, Mr Victor Silvester 15 being ค business man, not a dancer chairman of the Victor Silvester Organisation.
It is a big organisation, and Mr Silvester o little embar- rassed to find himself in control of it, a tle embarrassed by the amount of money he has made with his quick wit and his quick
feet.
Ever since 1 got my house cap for gym."
This is just as well because for 20 years he danced a mini- om 30 miles a day-every day. This orathon quick-quick- slow started in 1910, when, after running away from school to go into the Army, and after the war, running away from Sand- "A woman came up to me the Burst to Harrods, he found him- other day at the Lelcester Police self partnering lonely ladies at Ball, and asked if she could the tea-dance. shake ny hand," he told me. reddening Nercely at the memory. "I asked lier why. She said; Tve never shaken the hand of a real nilionaire be-
In the evenings ho gave les- fore. Well, I had to tell her. I mean, I'm not a Charlle Clore, Kensington High-street, and in at the Empress Rcoms you know."
itr Silvester acknowledged, three years he was 21 years old his spare time be practised. In Ho went on: "Soine of us however, that the three com- and the dancing champion of
that take care of his the world.
This officer kept looking back over his shoulder, restlessly, You do this in Pentonville, in any seething prison You make sure what is behind you.
really want to help these men, panles We can't. There are too many interests have turned over sey- of them and 100 few of us. We eral million pounds since he be
The tempo
his own studio. And he got the He married. And he started
get frustrated, the men get hope-gan his slow-slow-quick-quick- million-pound idea. less. He bad for everyone." slow campaign.
An older
"We
officer said; can't even supervise properly.
Pentonville has 600 men living three in a cell. This has been deverbed oficiolly as "a of affairs nothing ran but necessity."
The officer said: "Some of the mostly trivial. It's not Dur men prefer Bving three up, 1's cleverness. We get tipped off. company, But we're always Heaven knows what would hap- having to move them around. pon if we didn't.' They get to hating one another. What starts such troubles as Fights break out."
the explosion of violence Dartmoor, or the suries of prison strikes somelime ago?
His books
were
All the records he used for traching
called Danco Bond Records, but, since all musicians piny the bout tempo for the mood of the song rather than for the dancer, you could not dance to them.
Victor Silvester recorded four titles in the strict, tempo that
the name
Silvester to
Modest
that
a success
"Look over there-that gang There are two platinum dises scrubbing! There's a duzen men
to show that his records alone and no offeer. They could behave sold more than 30,000,000
singles, and a quarter of a ni plotting anything. for all W
lion L.P.s. know."
There are books - dozens of spella We went over to the scrubbing them. And every Silvester how anyone who has ever been on a He has made a They weren't plotting to-dance book is a guaranteed dance floor. Kang, anything. But you can't, in any best-seller even the Japanese minimum of two records every
And state case stop.men plotting. All you one, cribbed by a professor in month ever since.
was in 1935. can do is to find their plats of Tokyo University, who sent a excuse
It is, of course, copy to the irate author ("I The older officer told me: "We didn't get a penny out of it story. Mr Silvester blushes mo- undover say two plots a day, Not a penny."),
destly at such a bold word. There are the 23 dance stu- "There is," he says, "an ele- dios, run by Silvester for the ment of luck about all success. Honk Organisation. There is the I've been very lucky," band. stands up and down the country It plays for one-night
at every Thursday and Friday and
It is booked fur more than a year ahead,
This kind of remark is typical tension everyday
There is television, which has of a man who is the biggest prison life, of course you can't made Victor Silvester's dimdent contradiction possible-a modest keep men locked in cells for 18smile and military precision us showman. hours of the 24, often langer, familiar as his music, and, He has V.S. crabroldered on and not have lension.
course, there is the radio, where his shirt, and pictures of V.S. for 11 years he has been ran- and his dancers around the ning an overseas request pro- walks. Kramme, playing "Anniversary He, has framed his curtineate Waltz" for lonely British exles to show that
he is a director, in Peru and Puerto Rico.
and the one to say he has poss- ed the Advanced Driving Test, and the one that proves he was at a Royal Variety Show. Yot he says about his dancing: "It'a Today, Victor Silvester con- siders himself a dance
not for me to say whether I'm Jeader rather
band good or not." than a business
We stopped by a cell, one of 30 In row. Another officer bad for said: "It's
the staf Three can gang up on you...
But when we went into the cell the three men there, doing were not I had been before in this nothing, just sitting,
unfriendly. They kidded the officer, laughed at him. He scemed pleased.
Afterwards the officer said: "If they kid us along. it's all right. If they're quiet, we start worrying."
ordered shum of steel and state A
of Britain's and good many
marching feet; with its prisen fleers the term warder reek of
soap mode stale with was dropped in 1913) are worry dirt; with its great crowds ing now. Not every day, but on which seem, all the same, to be bad days. Like the other day, lost in great emptiness. when a prisoner was killed and three others hurt in a knife Night
Dartmoor.
Like the days I went myself to Pentonville and Wandsworth to find out about prison strife.
new
HELP
Afterwards he said:
"They to were friendly because nobody
could see us.
Outside the cell they'd have been seared to be sven talking to me."
This time it was different, A prison officer, fairly Pentonville, sald: "You can feet the tension. Days like today are like squatting on dynamite."
The
of
But the immediate cause? "They don't know," said the prison ofletal. "After the strikes we asked them. They didn't know.
"I wasn't against us. They didn't really want it. This kind of thing is started by a handful of trouble makers,
"The rest follow. They're more scured of the troublemakers than of us.
"They know we'll be fair."
-(London Express Serviço).
"Technically speaking, Farquharson, to the TV viowers in Moscow we're just another. "Western"
London Etvorase Burešna
Fanatical
man or a dancer. He is loo ac the dozens of countries which He smiles deprecatingly about tive to sit behind a desk and, buy his records and his books: at 01, he is growing too old to "Well, It's
take such strenuous exercise as that one is helping the export gratifying to think dancing-though he does go and drive."
thlugs
three
lift weights and days a week.
As I left, he said: "Oh, dear. "I'm a fanatic about physical concelled."
I hope it doesn't all sound very culture.
been.
London Ezprase Services.
Always have
Little loch defied giant
steamer
liner
WHEN, for the first time, a reigning Queen of England consented to name a merchant ship, she gave it her own name. The name was Queen Mary, and the Queen did not know that the 81,000- ton liner she launched only bore her royal name "by permission" of a little river steamer.
The story of the name the
Cunard company had to fight of a bunch menu that it camo for is told in The Mory: tho into favour.
Inevitable Ship, by Neil Potter. The Board of Trade lold Sir and Jack Frost (Goorgo G.Percy Bates, then Chairman of Harrap, 25.).
the Cunard, that he would have Known 45 "the 534," her to come to terms with tho chipbulkiera' order number, owners of the little toch steamer unit the moment of her launch that was already on September 20, 1934, the that name.
registered in Queen Mary was nearly pre- vented from having that because it already belonged to a Clyde steamer,
name
On menu Nemes suggested for Na, 584 Included Clydania, Leonia, Scotia, Britannia, Galiela and King George V.
Still sailing Two high-level approaches, falled
to persuado the Scots that they should give up the
nome to the future Queen of the North Atlantic.
Finally it was agreed the Clyde steamer should become. the Queen Mary IL, oni so leave the way cloor for the now liner Many thought that the name to be named the Queen Maty, would hara to end in "in" ta
Now the Queen Mary is cele at in with the Cunard name brating 25 years at pen-end
Queen Mary If stili sails up and down the Clyde.
plan for passenger linors.
It was when the name Queen Nury was scribbled on the bach
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